Day 67 – Vietnam Day 4

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

So Semester at Sea gave us all of these warning about NOT taking rides from guys on motorbikes during both of our preports. However, it didn’t take long for people to realize how fun it is to ride them, and not to mention they are a LOT quicker than taking the shuttle bus or a taxi. Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City is pretty terrible at almost all times of the day. At night it’s not bad though. It seemed like almost everyone rode a motorbike, then taxi’s and buses with a few other cars would mix in with them. Motorbikes have the ability to swerve between cars and traffic in places that a car is too big. Bikers also have their own lanes that are always filled up on the street.

So today we decided to take a motorbike to the Ben Than market area and just kind of browse the area. Nothing too exciting, pretty much the same stuff we had been doing the first three days. I did get some internet during lunch and started my download of LOST’s last episode before their break, but I wasn’t able to finish it. Now that I’ve seen the first few I HAVE to see the rest of them.

I found this glossy painting in an arts store that I really liked, so I got it. It’s hard to explain but it’s one big picture split into 4 sections, kind of giving it a modern-type of feel. It has the Gods of Fortune, Wisdom and Happiness on there. In the same store I found 3 square plate type things that you hang on your wall that say life long happiness in Mandarin, which I thought was pretty cool.

I bought these two relatively heavy things early in the afternoon, which was probably a bad idea. They gave me a nice case with a handle to carry everything, but I ended up having to haul this thing around town for the next 4 hours. Needless to say, it got heavy! But I knew there was a chance that we wouldn’t go back there (which we didn’t), so I’m glad that I got it when I did. I don’t want that ‘ol buyer’s regret.

We stopped over at our tailor around 5pm to try on our suits and make sure they fit right. Mine fit great, so I didn’t need any adjustments, but David had a few adjustments for him to make. This is part of the reason why we asked for him to have the suits done a day before we left, so he would be able to make adjustments. Good thing we did!

Now that I had my suit I needed to find some nice dress shoes so I could wear my suit out before I get home and to the Ambassador’s Ball in a few weeks on the ship. I have shoes at home that I really like, but of course I didn’t bring them, so I wasn’t looking to spend too much money on a pair of shoes. Finding shoes in size US11 is HARD in Vietnam! Everyone there is smaller and therefore has smaller, skinnier feet. Most stores didn’t have anything larger than a US 9 (in men’s) but I somehow was able to find a store that had some nice shoes that I liked in a size 10.5 for a good price. Of course I bargained the price with him before buying. Always bargain before you buy anything in Vietnam. Unless the store says it has a fixed price, then you’re SOL.

Bootlegged DVD’s are everywhere in Vietnam. About any movie you can think of, both old and new is available for less than $2USD, and complete seasons of shows are about the same price. The people that I was with stocked up with a ton of movies, so that took a good hour for them to pick out all of the movies that they wanted. However, I didn’t get any. I don’t like that bootlegged stuff. I’m REALLY anxious to get an XBOX 360 though. They have them here, but for about the same price in the US, so I’m just going to have to wait until I have a real job and some money before I buy one.

We took a taxi back to the ship to drop off the stuff that we bought, then planned on meeting up with some other people to go out that night. Once we met up with them we decided that a $10USD massage lasting 75 minutes sounded AMAZING after walking around carrying stuff all day. Vietnam is full of massage parlors/shops/whatever you’re suppose to call them and we had a few handouts from people giving them to us in the street earlier in the day so we headed to one of those places. By the time we actually got to the massage place it was past 11pm, and they close at midnight so I asked the lady before we paid if we would still get the full 75 minutes, and she said yes so we went ahead and got the massage. Unfortunately, the lady that told us that we would get the full 75 minutes left and our masseuses stopped a little before midnight. Although we didn’t get a full 75 minutes, we still only paid $10 and the massage was definitely worth it while it lasted! That was my first actual massage that I’ve had to pay for. Definitely worth it.

After the massage I was spent, but David and Chris insisted on going to the casino before heading back to the ship so we headed there for an hour or so. I decided to give the video black jack a shot, throwing in $10 (which actually lasts a long time since minimum bets are less than $1USD. I didn’t have much luck with that though, I was out within half an hour. (Stupid machines) hah. David actually won a good amount of money on the automated black jack table though. So at least someone won.

When we were done we grabbed a taxi right outside of this casino, which was also a hotel, and asked the taxi if he knew where to take us to get to our ship. Of course he said yes, without really knowing where it was. Luckily, we negotiated a price before getting into the cab because he had no idea where to go. He went around for the longest time asking people on the streets for directions, but he couldn’t figure it out. Finally, I told him to go to the Ben Than market area because all of the taxi’s and motorbike people there know exactly where the ship is since they’ve given us rides to and from the ship and seen our bus stop there. So get lucky and find a motorbike guy that speaks some English (very little) and somehow communicated to him to tell our taxi driver how to get back to the ship. So about an hour later (it’s no more than a 10 minute drive usually) we finally get back to our ship. Talk about an adventure!